More about alendronic acid

Well said Eileen!! :lol: :lol:

EileenH ***** ! Yes, yes, yes,yes ! Agreed. Manufactured products, full of nasties.....artificial rubbish....Natural is best, although, in moderation...of course !....Granny Moss :cheers:

beev - if you use artificial sweeteners the body is tricked into thinking it has had something sweet and over time it will start to secrete insulin in response to the \"sweetness\" trigger rather than a higher blood sugar level and this leads to your blood sugar falling to a low level making you crave carbs. Very simply, it is now believed that a high level of insulin causes any excess carbs to be depositied as fat rather than being burnt as excess energy. One of the aspects of the thing now called \"metabolic syndrome\" is that there is a consistently high amount of insulin in the blood and the body becomes what they call \"insulin resistant\" - it's all horribly complicated and I haven't read it up for a while, but this is thought to be what leads to the deposition of fat around the middle - we see it as steroid-takers but look how many people there are of that shape nowadays and they can't ALL be on steroids you'd hope! The diets that told you to snack (6 meals a day) contributed to that, in fact, if the snacks were predominantly carb, albeit not megahigh in calories. The success of the Atkins style diets which excluded all carbs was down to that - no stimulation of insulin and, in time, the fat deposits were used up. The ideal diets for weight loss now are agreed to be ones with restricted carbs but not as extreme as the Atkins original was which was a bit hard on kidneys and had some unpleasant side effects. The modern diet tends to have massive amounts of carbohydrate - not least because of the desire to reduce fat. Most commercially produced products have more carb to compensate for the lower fat - it's amazing what you can do in a factory to make light, tasty (?) snacks. And their effect in the body is to make you crave them so you eat more of them and increase sales and the company's profits. They add sugar to all sorts of things - bread rolls (especially burger rolls) and bread for making toast so it makes a nice brown colour. And flavour enhancers - eventually you find ordinary homemade food tasteless because you don't use these things when you cook at home.

I could go on and on and on - but I won't :wink: :lol:

Back to basics, I say - cook from scratch, then you know exactly what is in what you put in your mouth. There was a comment on Sky News this morning about buying packet mixes for pancakes - you still usually have to add the egg and the milk - so why not just buy flour?? At half the price.

EileenH

Eileen - thanks for that.

I always eat natural foods - never the horrible convenience stuff - for the reasons you say and becasue I actually don't like the taste of them.

I do, however, in my quest to lose weight, use quite a lot of sweetener (Splenda) on things like cereal, natural yoghurt , raspberries etc (as I prefer to add fruit to natural instead of buying a fruit yoghurt). Is this habit working AGAINST my weight loss? My weight is mainly around my middle!!

Beev

beev - why do you use sweeteners? I must be really strange (no need to answer that by the way :lol: ) because I honestly do not like sweet things! I can smell if someone has put sugar in my tea - my mother used to do it to me all the time! Raspberries - my favourite fruit, but no sugar. Everyone I know puts sugar on strawberries - yuk! As a child I put loads of sugar in tea apparently - then stopped drinking it for years and when I started again it was no sugar. Occasionally I get myself a spoonful of homemade jam which is sweet but fruit is always \"au natur\". We've just eaten pancakes. Being mean I always save the little packs of sugar you get with coffee :roll: :oops: and I noticed I used one per pancake while my husband used 2! A bag of sugar would last us for about 2 years.

I think if you started to consciously use less sugar/sweetener on things, bit by bit you could wean yourself off sweeteners altogether. Think of the money you could save! We rarely eat puddings - and if I do it is something like the Gu chocolate pots. No point scrimping! I've mentioned a couple of times recently that your tastebuds renew themselves every 6 weeks or so - so you can go cold turkey and suffer for 6 weeks and the job is done! We have this suspicion that being at Uni was the thing that disposed of our sugar habit! We used to go to each other's rooms after dinner for coffee - if the host had sugar available, everyone took sugar - if they didn't, they tended not to bother or, if desperate, brought their own. Now there was a way to save the pennies!

:choc: :cupcake:

EileenH

EileenH

Yes - I must have developed a sweet tooth - I remember eating loads of biscuits into the night at Uni - so maybe that accounts for it?!

I think I will try to do as you say and gradually wean off. I dont take sweetener in tea or coffee.

But, is the sweetener stopping from losing weight do you think cos of the insulin thing you described??

By the way, I don't think you are strange! You like red wine and chocolate, so how could you be. :lol:

Beev

I can only say that one of the theories about weight gain is that a consistently highish level of insulin in the blood encourages fat to be deposited, especially around the middle. The fat deposits when taking steroids are in that position amongst others and the steroids do change the way we metabolise carbohydrates and many experts tell their patients to up their protein intake to avoid loss of muscle bulk and reduce the carbs to keep weight gain under control. I think there are 2 sides to it - one is this insulin story where the body thinks it has had something sweet so produces more insulin than it needs and the other is that as this insulin gets into the blood the sugar level falls to a point where your body reminds you to eat something to use up that insulin - so you feel hungry, usually the \"craving a quick fix\" sort of hungry and, without intending to, eat more than you should have. When you crave food you just don't notice waht you put away!

On the bright side though - do you think we could develop a chocolate and red wine diet??? :lol:

EileenH

Hello, I have beeen taking calcium tablets for some while, and nine months ago, my doctor prescribed Alendronicc acid tablets to be taken once a week. Two nights after taking the first tablet, I had the most dreadful night seizure (I do have them but never like this), so I stopped taking them. One week ago I felt that I was just being stupid, so I took another. Within two nights I had the most dreadful 'seizure' ever. I could not move for some hours and felt as though half my body was missing. It was so awful I lost the will to live. Very difficult to explain. I do take Prednisolone steroids (5 mg daily), and powerful pain killers together with Epilem tablets night and morning. I am always in pain and have difficulty walking, yat onlly one year ago, though 87 years of age, I could go ballroom salsa and latin dancing. This column has proved a great comfort to me, as I feel there is still hope. Bless us all, Arthur

Hello Arthur

There is a lot of debate going on about Alendronic Acid on quite a few threads at the moment, As with most drugs, it seems that many people can take it without any problems whilst others really suffer.

Many of us on steroids for PMR are prescribed AA automatically in order to protect our bones from thinning as a side effect of the steroids. However, many of us on steroids have been lucky and found that we don't suffer from this side effect - I am one of those who started on 40mgs Prednisolone gradually tapering over 5.5 years and reached zero Pred with only a tiny amount of bone thinning (probably down to advancing years!) in spite of never taking AA.

Importantly, anyone being prescribed long-term steroids should have a DEXA scan carried out at the outset to get a baseline reading of the state of their bones and if there is no sign of bone thinning then they don't need AA at this time. The DEXA should then be repeated as if there is going to be any bone thinning as a result of the steroids then it generally shows after the first few months of treatment. The National Osteoporosis Society helpline will answer any questions you may have, and they have some very useful information about AA on their website.

As for ballroom, salsa and latin dancing at 87....wow! I thought my 87-year-old aunt was the only one on the planet doing that, plus her 3x weekly gym and swimming sessions. I hope better days are just around the corner for you, Arthur, and that you'll be 'tripping the light fantastic' again soon.

Arthur - one thing I meant to ask was whether you've had a Vitamin D blood test. Many people are found to be deficient, thus leading to possible pain/stiffness and other nasties. A simple three-month course of pure Vit D3 to boost supplies back to normal levels can help. I was found to be deficient with a reading of 36 and after a 3-month course it increased to 89 - normal is somewhere between 75 and 150/200 depending on your PCT area.

Hello all and especially Mrs O for her kind words and information. Wil reply properly when my brain is back in service. Everything is still a little out of kilter. I really do begin to wonder about all the drugs I am taking. Just one year ago I waas a young man, but what seems overnight and I have become an old crock. I am quite sure the dancing kept me young. Had to pack it in when I became a full time carer for my dearest wife. She had Alzheimers for best part of ten years. The final eighteen months were awful for her. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this column. It really has given me hope, just when I felt like calling it a day. Arthur